


us, at the edge of the universe

by redluxite (wordstruck)



Series: VLD One-Shots [31]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (the death isn't graphic don't worry), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Captain Atlas Shiro, Crimson Soldier Keith, Crossover, Established Relationship, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Suicide/Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite
Summary: “Shirogane Takashi. Captain Atlas, the man who stole himself more time.” Lotor’s face is shadowed in the dim light, but Shiro can still hear the sneer in his voice. “And the Crimson Soldier, a man who has lost his time. I welcome you to Vormir.”





	us, at the edge of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched Avengers: Endgame and saw this scene and after my gremlin brain was done being emotional it immediately thought "okay, but what if Sheith". And now here we are, and here you are.
> 
> Somewhat spoilers for Endgame since it's a Sheith version of That One Scene, but tbh could also just be taken as Shiro and Keith getting the Soul stone. I know Twitter voted for Sendak as Red Skull but listen: I am a Lotorfucker through and through. Any further edits will be made retrospectively. Character design inspired by [@zuspacey's art!](https://twitter.com/zuspacey/status/1123948513870716934)
> 
> ...enjoy? (Suffer with me, all of you.)

* * *

 

 

Vormir, when they arrive, is deserted.

The whole planet is dark and – not barren; not in the conventional sense, not like the red desert of the Pieira that stretched out and out and out. Still, Vormir feels empty. There are pools of liquid scattered across the landscape that Shiro isn’t sure they can safely touch. What looks like an eclipse in the sky backdrops a ridge of mountains – and two pillars, high atop a summit.

That’s it, then. That’s where they’re headed.

“Pretty gloomy place,” Keith quips from behind him, and Shiro snorts.

“Maybe we should have brought flashlights,” he responds dryly.

Keith cracks a laugh, stepping up and smacking Shiro on the arm. “Come on,” he says, nodding to the structure on the horizon. “Sooner we get the stone, sooner we can get back.”

He turns to Shiro then, smile wry and hair falling loose from its braid. The permanent dusk of Vormir paints his skin in ruddy colors, puts a flush to his cheeks. Shiro looks at him, this determined, firebright boy, and exhales a quiet smile.

“Lead the way.”

 

They get all the way up the first set of stairs – carved, in true fantasy-adventure fashion, into the side of the mountain – when a cloaked figure materializes before them. Shiro immediately goes for his luxite shield, while Keith unsheathes his dagger. There is a moment where they both brace themselves for an attack, before the figure steps forward and pulls back its hood.

“Shirogane Takashi. Captain Atlas, the man who stole himself more time.” Lotor’s face is shadowed in the dim light, but Shiro can still hear the sneer in his voice. “And the Crimson Soldier, a man who has lost his time. I welcome you to Vormir.”

Shiro sees Keith hesitate in his peripheral vision, shoulders pulled back in tension. It frustrates the other man, sometimes, these reminders of the memories he’s lost. Shiro bares his teeth at Lotor in half a snarl, hefting his shield higher. His Altean mechanical arm flexes, ready to strike.

“What are you doing here, Lotor,” he demands.

“The Quintessence banished me here, when I tried to wield it with my bare hands.” Lotor’s expression turns derisive, a sign of muted fury. “Now I stand guard over its sister stone, guiding everyone who comes here to a treasure I cannot possess.”

“And how do we know you won’t betray us?” Keith asks, raising his dagger higher.

Lotor smiles thinly. “You have no choice.” He steps back, tipping his head in the direction of the summit. “Come. You must pay the cost.”

 

The summit is just as cold and desolate as the rest of the planet. The stone towers rise high over them, flanking the eclipse on the horizon. Shiro keeps his shield at his side; he doesn’t trust Lotor, not one whit, especially with the mention of a _cost._ They haven’t much to bargain with – he just hopes it won’t come to their weapons, or their ship.

Lotor comes to a stop at the very edge. Overhead, the clouds converge in a dark, roiling mass. The cliff drops down and down, like the canyons back in the Pieira desert. Shiro peers over carefully.

There’s no stone, only bare rock and dust.

“So where is it?” he asks, turning back to Lotor.

Vormir’s guardian keeps smiling that thin, bland smile. “What you seek lies in front of you, as does what you fear.”

“There’s nothing there,” Shiro insists. Beside him, Keith shifts, stance weapons-ready.

“The Soul stone holds a special place among the others. It has a wisdom in it, a sentience, a _hunger._ ” Briefly, a smirk flashes over Lotor’s face, and there’s a glint in his eyes Shiro doesn’t like. “To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands sacrifice.”

“Of what?” Dread creeps between Shiro’s ribs, a bloom of splinters and ice. He glances at Keith to find him watching Lotor, almost entranced, dagger hand trembling just a little.

“For you to take the stone,” Lotor goes on, “you must lose that which you love.”

It doesn’t hit either of them, not at first. Then Shiro’s breath catches on an inhale, because—

“A soul for a soul,” Lotor says.

And Shiro thinks, _no._

 

Half an hour later, they’re still standing on the cliff, still at an impasse.

 _A sacrifice,_ Lotor had said, and he could be lying but Shiro also knows – Lotor has no reason to. Preventing them from taking the stone gains him nothing, and all other efforts to find another way have been useless. And they can’t return to Earth without it, not if they want to win this fight. Not if they want to bring everyone back.

“You know who it has to be, Shiro.” The words are quiet, measured; as gentle as Keith can make them. His expression is rueful. He looks – brittle, breakable. He looks how Shiro feels.

The eclipse hasn’t shifted. The cold hasn’t changed. Shiro stares up at the sky, smiling faintly. Back home, before Haggar, before the Galra, before everything, he’d been in awe just chasing Earth’s horizons. Now he’s looking at a sky on an alien planet, countless light-years away.

He’d never expected to fly at all, much less end up on the outer edges of the universe. Never expected to live the life he’s had.

(He’d also never expected Keith.)

Shiro knows it has to be him. He’s been living on borrowed time as it is – stolen time, as Lotor had called it. He shouldn’t be here at all, but here he is all the same. The Garrison’s super-soldier, ready to save the world, one last time.

“I know,” he says, and it’s – not steady, really. But certain. Final.

Then both of them stand up, and turn toward the cliff.

Keith pauses first, brow furrowed. His expression goes from confused to pissed off as Shiro takes a half-step, then glances back at Keith in surprise.

“What?” Shiro blanches, distraught. “No, Keith, it’s gotta be me. You know that.”

“ _No._ ” Keith’s hands are clenched into fists. “It _has_ to be me. After everything I did – everyone that I—”

“It wasn’t you.” Shiro cuts him off viciously, through gritted teeth. This is an argument long-fought, and one Shiro will never back down from. What Keith had done – the things he doesn’t remember – none of it was ever his fault. Shiro has warred with friends over that point. “Those things, that person – it wasn’t you. No one should blame you.”

“ _I do._ ” And the way Keith looks at him – _Christ_ — “Earth needs _you_ , Shiro. The Paladins need you. You’re our leader, you’re the best chance we’ve got at stopping Haggar—”

“I’m not living in a world that I saved at the cost of _you dying!”_ Shiro yells. His voice wavers somewhere in the middle, but he doesn’t care. His shield drops to the barren rock; his eyes close. “I can’t do that, Keith – don’t ask me to do that. Don’t.”

There’s a hesitation, and then:

“Do you think I can?”

There’s a fracture in Keith’s words that cuts Shiro down to bone. Sometimes Keith is still so young in Shiro’s eyes, vulnerable in ways he knows only he gets to see. It only makes things hurt a hundred times over.

“You will,” Shiro insists, opening his eyes and trying to look at Keith. If this is the last he’ll see of this beautiful, stubborn man, he wants to remember everything. “You will. You have to.”

“Shiro—”

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a split second where Keith balks, caught off-guard by the apology, but it’s all Shiro needs. He lunges forward, clipping Keith on the knees and sending him crashing to the ground. One more blow to the head, to keep him down those precious few moments longer, and then Shiro takes off running, forward and forward, to the edge of the cliff, and then—

 

It’s the same feeling, floating in a ship that’s just broken the atmosphere, and floating in mid-air right before the plummet.

It’s the same feeling, and it’s not.

 

Shiro shuts his eyes, preferring to focus on the feel of the wind whistling past him. He shuts his eyes and thinks of everything he’s done up to now, everything that’s led him to this point. Signing up for the Garrison. The super serum program, because Sam Holt had sworn it would cure him, make him able to be a pilot. The Kerberos mission that had nearly cost him everything. Meeting the other Paladins. Fighting Haggar.

And in all this: Keith.

Meeting Keith for the first time at the Garrison, that stubborn and wild boy who could fly easy as breathing. Getting to know Keith and falling in love with him, piece by hard-won piece. Watching Keith grow as a pilot, then flying alongside him, both of them chasing horizons. Kissing Keith at the edge of a cliff and feeling like they were both on the edge of the world.

Losing Keith on the Kerberos mission, to the Galra. Trying and and failing to rescue him, bring him back. Finding him again years later, a man with a mask on his face and no memories, but all Shiro could think was that Keith was alive, alive, _alive._ Keith saving him again, and that time, finally, Shiro could finally bring him back. Bring him home.

(Keith is a constant, from a time back and back and back. Keith is a starfish in bed on their off-days. Keith isn’t very good at swimming yet, is fond of strawberries. Keith is sometimes still so young in Shiro’s eyes. Keith is his world.)

It’s worth it, this fall, if it means keeping Keith alive. Keeping everyone alive. Bringing them all back.

Shiro takes a deep breath, fighting down the instinctive terror, surrendering to the fall, and—

—something catches on the belt of his suit, arresting his fall. He jerks to a stop, nearly slamming into the cliff wall. The piton cable winds round and pulls tight, anchoring him, while something drops into his peripheral vision. Shiro reaches out instinctively, grabbing hold because—

Because it’s Keith.

The piton cable holds fast. Shiro knows in a heartbeat: he won’t be able to detach it, not in time. He wants to scream, wants to shake Keith for doing this, making things go this way – making them _end_ this way, and Shiro can’t do anything about it. It’s not fair, he’s just gotten Keith back, it shouldn’t be Keith, it _shouldn’t—_

“It’s okay,” Keith says, so quietly, so sweet. Calloused fingers squeeze Shiro’s wrist lightly, just once. He smiles, and any other time – Shiro knows that smile. Keith smiles at him like that in the mornings, sleep-soft and affectionate, like love.

“It’s okay,” Keith says, so quietly, in a way that shatters Shiro’s heart.

“No,” he says, like it’ll change anything, like it’ll make Keith change his mind. “No, Keith, _please_ —”

“I love you.” The way Keith says it – like it’s any other day. Like he’s just kissed Shiro before sending him off on his day; like when he realizes he’s alive and here and Shiro’s saved him. Like he’s not saying goodbye.

“ _Keith_ —”

 

Fight-worn fingers slip from Shiro’s grasp, and then—

Keith’s gone.

 

Shiro gets a moment that feels like an eternity, hanging off the edge of a cliff, and then all at once he’s on his back in the middle of one of the pools on Vormir, soaked through his skin. The sky above hasn’t changed; the eclipse hasn’t shifted. The universe hasn’t collapsed. His heart hasn’t shattered.

He sits up.

The Soul stone sits in his hand, glowing yellow and warm.

 

Keith’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come yell at me on Twitter at [@redluxite](https://twitter.com/redluxite) 8) Epilogue and certain AU content exclusive to [@aya_creates](https://twitter.com/aya_creates)


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